The defiant leader of the former thralls was a man named Sven.

  He was also one of Nikoli’s longest serving slaves, though once upon a time he’d acted as Captain of the Kringlegard guard force. He’d held the post for the better part of ten years, right up until Nikoli rolled into town with all the bluster of a traveling snake-oil salesman. Nikoli had come bearing glad tidings of a brighter future—one filled with Relics, Artifacts, and untold marvels that would make Kringlegard prosper like never before.

  When Sven had the audacity to question Nikoli’s intentions, he’d been abducted in the night and found himself bound in the Nikoli’s soul forge with a spiked collar fastened around his throat.

  He’d also ended up short one ear.

  Given his track record, it wasn’t hard to see why he was so suspicious of a stranger who came bearing gifts and promises. But his tune started to change once he saw the other Delvers roaming the store, eating, talking, laughing without a care in the world. And it flipped rapidly when I snagged him a slice of steaming hot pizza from the convivence stall. By the time I finally showed him the swanky airport showers, he’d somewhat reluctantly begun to believe.

  Though the real proof would come when I finally reunited him with his wife—Rebecka, the old, one-legged woman we’d met at the gatehouse outside Kringlegard.

  While Harper tended to the survivors, I took some time to relocate the soul forge, tacking it on to the Pharmacy so that Jakob would be able to access it as well. It was a major upgrade to our current alchemy set up, and I was excited to see what the Cendral would be able to cook up, given some time and the right resources.

  And if there was one thing the soul forge had in abundance, it was resources.

  There was so much shit to sort through—Relics, Artifacts, ingredients, crafting equipment—that it would probably take weeks or even months to sort it all out. That was a good problem to have, and not something I was complaining about, but it would take time I didn’t currently have. I’d promised Sven and the others that we’d get them back to Kringelgard as quickly as possible. Though I wanted to make sure they all got food, medical attention, and a decent shower before we reunited them with their loved ones.

  A couple of hours was a small price to pay to scrub off years’ worth of grime and not smell like a swampy butthole.

  Which left me enough time to pry Nikoli out of his mech and pick over his corpse. And hol-ee shit was the guy packing some world class Relics and gear—not that I’d really been expecting anything less.

  He had several stamina-based Relics equipped—Calloused Soul, Ruinous Rupture, and Loan Shark—which were all Rare Grade or better. Ruinous Rupture was a direct combat ability that dealt a hellish amount of damage on contact and had a 25% chance to send a ripple coursing through the victim’s body, rupturing a random organ in the process. Could be a spleen or kidney—something that would hurt like a bitch and kill you slowly—or something a bit more vital like the lungs, heart, or even brain.

  The effect was basically a roulette table of internal misery.

  I’d be sure to give that one to Temp—right after creating a Sigil with a similar effect.

  Loan Shark was a bit like another Relic I’d seen before called Insurance Pact, which allowed the user to make an “insurance pact” with an ally, allowing both pact members to share up to twenty percent of their max Health Pool with the other for ten minutes. Loan Shark was far more insidious, though, because when activated it transferred 50% of all damage dealt to the caster to a secondary target, under the caster’s influence.

  It might benefit me since I could probably pair it with my Horrors, but I had no doubt Nikoli had used his thralls as sacrificial lambs to soak up damage.

  The best of the three, though, was Calloused Soul, a fabled-grade Relic that passively allowed the user’s total Health and Stamina Pool to include a boost based on the user’s Resonance Stat. It was a perfect way to turn a glass-cannon into a beefy tank without having to drop a shit load of points into Toughness or Athleticism. Brilliant, if only I had room for it in my current configuration.

  I idly wondered if there wasn’t some way to turn it into a usable Sigil, though.

  That would certainly solve a lot of my problems.

  He also had two offensive Mana-based Relics, Circuitbreaker Surge—a ranged lightning damage spell—and Frost Construct, which he’d no doubt picked up from a Snowmaw Hag. Elemental Distillation and Suspension of Volatility, one Rare the other Fabled-grade, were both Alchemy-focused Relics that dealt with elixir creation, refinement, and enhancement. That wasn’t in my wheelhouse, but I had no doubt that Jakob would give his right arm to get ahold of those.

  I recoiled in disgust when I got to a Fabled Relic called Forced Conscription Collar, which perfectly resembled the spiked collars we’d taken off of Nikoli’s thralls.

  It allowed the user to fabricate a spell totem collar which, when equipped on any target, compelled them to do the user’s bidding. I’d seen other compulsion spells before—the entire 24th floor had been under the will of the HOA through the use of the Nexus SporeFeed Social Filter—but this was worse in some ways, because the spell effect lasted until the collar was removed.

  That could be minutes or years.

  I almost wanted to sacrifice it on the spot, just to keep it from getting back out into the wild. I probably would’ve, too, except… Well, it was Fable-grade, and I hadn’t really seen anything quite like it before. So, even though I felt like a piece of shit for doing so, I reluctantly slipped it into storage for latter.

  My mood brightened when I got to the last two, Relics, however. It was obvious that Nikoli was a skilled Rune Smith, and the two Relics were at the heart of his power.

  Runic Glpyh Array

  Fabled Relic – Level 15

  Range: Variable

  Cost: 15 Mana + Stored Sigil Pattern Cost

  Cast Time: 20 Seconds

  Duration: Until Activated

  Material Component: 1 x Runic Engraver’s Awl (Artifact), 1 x Compatible Surface

  Welcome to the grown-up version of the Runic Resonance Trap, where we trade in your baby’s first boom-boom for a fully weaponized Sigil Sudoku of death, dismemberment, and—if you’re feeling fancy—spontaneous combustion.

  Runic Glyph Array allows you to etch up to three distinct Sigil Patterns into a single synergistic matrix, forming what we in the business refer to as a Glyph Array. Instead of the Runic equivalent of a stick of dynamite, you now have three sticks of dynamite duct-taped together with a nail bomb, all arranged into a lovely symmetrical pattern.

  Spells inscribed within an Array can interact—combine a fire rune with a vacuum sigil and suddenly you’ve got a zero-oxygen backdraft bomb. Or pair a paralysis glyph with a force trap and watch some poor bastard get frozen in place and yeeted into a wall at Mach Two. Even better, sigil patterns that utilize Stamina can now also be included in your crafting combos.

  And unlike its dumber, leakier little brother, this spell eliminates Mana Leakage entirely—every Mana point goes exactly where you want it. Plus, the triggering conditions have been upgraded and can now be stacked and nested for increased Tomfuckery. Create time delays, conditional logic trees, and extremely specific activation parameters. Basically, you’re now a rune coder. May the gods have mercy on your debugging skills.

  This Relic enables Mana usage.

  With the right materials and a little prep time, someone with the right gear would be virtually unstoppable. Honestly, if we hadn’t sucker punched Nikoli from the get go, I was pretty sure he would’ve mopped the floor with our bloody corpses. The only downside was that creating and overlapping the sigil patterns for a glyph array sounded tedious, time-consuming, and dangerous. One little slip up or lapse in concentration could undue all the work and blow up right in my fucking face.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  But that was where the second Relic came into play.

  Runic Auto-Scriber

  Rare Relic – Level 15

  Range: 15 Feet

  Cost: 25 Mana

  Cast Time: 3 Seconds

  We’ve all been there, diligently trying to engrave runic trap sigils when BAM! Your finger slips, you accidentally draw a glyph backwards, and instead of summoning a life-ending fireball, you accidentally open a portal to the Pocket Realm of Screaming Toenails?. Whoopsie daisy.

  But not anymore!

  Once equipped, Runic Auto-Scriber lets you pre-record up to ten unique sigil patterns or glyph arrays into a specialized mental sigil book—an internalized codex of arcane geometry, tattooed directly onto the hippocampus. Each sigil or array is stored in perfect mnemonic suspension, sort of like “magical hotkeys” but nestled inside your delicate, spongy gray matter. Once inscribed, these sigils can be cast instantly, flawlessly, and without error—no more “Uh-oh, I meant to write Contain Flame, not Consume Soul.”

  This Relic enables Mana usage.

  Even though it was only Rare-grade—and without any direct combat utility—the Auto-Scriber would save me an assload of time when it came to crafting spell cards. I’d still need to do some serious experimenting to formulate effective glyph arrays in the first place, but once I had those down, the process would basically be automated. And now that I could use Relics that were fueled by Stamina, I’d be able to create spell cards that had a much wider range of effects.

  I’d need to free up room inside my Spatial Core first, though. That’s what it always came back to. Not enough space for all the cool shit I had.

  I saved the Relic for later, but immediately swapped out my basic Runic Resonance Trap for the Runic Glyph Array. I’d need to spend some time creating new trap cards before moving down to the next floor, but this was still one hell of a find for a build like mine.

  With the Relics taken care of, I moved onto Nikoli’s gear—or at least the items that were personally on him and not squirreled away in the soul forge. Clearing and cataloging the forge would be a feat of Herculean proportions.

  The red and white suit—which consisted of the jacket, pants, boots, belt, and floppy hat—were all part of a set called, Santa’s Slayer Regalia. This was the first time I’d ever seen a set before and I was as impressed as I was horrified. I assumed most of the fur suits the Howlers wore were also sets, but I’d never had the chance to fully examine one.

  Each of the individual pieces had some powerful enchantments—ranging from speed and health bonuses, to resistances against cold and physic damage—but sadly, because they were part of a set, they only worked if all items were equipped simultaneously.

  That might not have been such a bad thing, assuming I was okay looking like a deranged shopping mall Santa, but having the full set equipped came with a few extra drawbacks.

  At the top of the list was the Ho-Ho-Horror Body Reconfiguration, which instantly forced the wearer to gain fifty pounds of “festive mass,” mostly in the gut, ass, and upper jowls. The wearer would also grow a thick white beard, regardless of gender, which couldn’t be shaved off even after the full armor set was unequipped. It also came with a Sweet Tooth debuff, making the wearer obsessed with cookies and other sugary essentials and an obsessive compulsion to “punish the wicked.”

  Still, it was almost worth it for the added benefits, like the ability to forgo sleep almost entirely—thanks to a passive buff called Clausian Circadian Rhythm—and an additional ability called Festive Compression, which allowed the wearer of the suit to squeeze themselves into all kinds of tight spaces, like a Raccoon shimmying down a chimney.

  The benefits just didn’t outweigh the side effects, but I’d definitely keep the suit around for future experimentation.

  The three Artifacts I was most interested in were a strange device called the Doom Spoon, Nikoli’s sword, and the odd pistol that let him blast out runic-engraved saw blades.

  True to its name, the Doom Spoon looked like an archaic torture tool designed specifically for scooping out eyeballs—cleanly, efficiently and, most importantly, without killing the victim. Like Jakob’s plasma shield, the spoon radiated cold fire, searing shut any wounds the instant they were made to prevent the poor bastard on the receiving end from bleeding out.

  I shuddered involuntarily as the image of Nikoli digging into someone’s face flashed through my mind—scooping out eyes like he was dishing up ice cream. And the worst part? The last thing his victim would ever see was that burning metal edge coming straight for their retina. Needless to say, I didn’t have any plans for something so unabashedly evil, but I could see how the sigil powering the rune might be effective for something like my demolition screwdriver.

  The sword—its blade razor sharp on one side, serrated on the other, and covered with faint swirls of red and white—and was a Fabled-grade Artifact with three extremely nasty and debilitating effects.

  Dark Solstice Cleaver

  Fabled Artifact

  Type: Sword, Melee (Enhanced)

  There are blades forged for kings, and there are blades forged for war. This one was forged for neither. The Dark Solstice Cleaver is the remnant of an older age—when winter was a thing to be feared, not celebrated. When the sun abandoned the sky for months on end, and people huddled inside to find comfort from the fury of the frozen night. When blood froze to iron and the wind carried whispers of the Wild Hunt instead of Yuletide Merriment.

  The Dark Solstice Cleaver was never meant for human hands. Instead, it was the kind of weapon that tribes would offer to their gods before the dark closed in for good. Forged not by simple blacksmiths, but by dark rites—pounded into being beneath eclipsed moons, cooled in the blood of midwinter sacrifices, and quenched in ancient vows. Its core is blood iron and froststeel, wrapped in red-and-white enamel streaks that resemble candystriping only in the way a butcher’s apron might.

  May your enemies find no comfort in the dark.

  Effect 1, Frostbite Filigree: Deals an additional 25 points of cold damage on every strike. After three successive hits, the target is afflicted with Black Rot Frostbite—a creeping, debilitating effect that will claim hands, feet, fingers and noses. It’s not instant, but it is inevitable.

  Effect 2, Candystiped Hemorrhage: Inflicts 30 points of Bleed damage over 60 seconds. If the target is already Afflicted by Black Rot Frostbite, the Bleed damage doubles in severity.

  Effect 3, White Elephant: On a successful strike, the wielder may activate White Elephant, swapping their remaining health pool with that of the target for sixty seconds. Used properly, it turns death into a weapon—baiting stronger foes into a fatal exchange. But if the target’s Toughness is more than double your own, they can resist the effect entirely.

  I whistled through my teeth as I read over the description.

  Obviously, the soul forge itself was the real prize, but this was a damn good runner up, and better than any of Nikoli’s actual Relics. Dark, twisted, and exceptionally powerful, it would be perfect for Temperance. And, after getting a brief glimpse into her grim past, it seemed like an even better fit. The people closest to her had once accused her of being a witch, and now she would have a weapon suitable for the Devil himself.

  I set the sword aside, then turned my attention to the final Artifact, the Saw Gun. Surprisingly, it was only a Common-Grade Artifact and didn’t come with any unique effects at all, though appearances could be deceiving. On the surface, the weapon wasn’t particularly powerful, but I was more interested in how it worked.

  Clearly, this was something Nikoli had crafted himself, and though the design was rather simple, it was also borderline genius. The gun was built from two distinct components that worked together in perfect sync. The upper receiver was a flat metal launcher affixed to a pistol grip with a basic trigger assembly. There was no firing pin and, surprisingly, almost no traditional mechanical parts at all. Sure, the trigger had a basic spring mechanism, but it wasn’t connected to a standard fire control group like you’d find in a firearm.

  Instead, pulling the trigger activated a pair of glyph arrays—one inscribed into the upper receiver, the other carved into the lower.

  The array on the upper receiver contained three primary sigil patterns. The first was a recursive mana battery, supplying a steady current of magical energy to the other two, allowing the system to recharge automatically and be fired repeatedly without burnout. The second was some sort of spatial rune, linked to its twin in the lower receiver. The third consisted of a high-pressure air burst sigil—essentially an arcane pneumatic cannon.

  The lower receiver, which threaded directly into the upper, held its own trio of runes: another mana battery, the paired spatial rune, and a storage sigil that created a miniaturized subspace compartment. When the lower receiver was detached, the user could load ammunition—in this case, runic-etched sawblades—directly into the pocket dimension.

  Firing the gun triggered a precise chain of runic effects. First, the spatial rune summoned a random blade from the subspace chamber and slotted it into the flat, metallic firing plate in the upper receiver. A heartbeat later, the air rune kicked in, launching the sawblade downrange with the force of a roided out potato cannon. When paired with razor-sharp saw blades, that was a particularly deadly combo.

  Sure, Psychic Sovereignty was faster and more accurate, so I wouldn’t be replacing it in my main rotation any time soon—but the Saw Gun’s design was, in a word, inspired. The underlying mechanics had an insane number of potential applications.

  I intended to steal every one of them.

  Off the top of my head, I could already think of a dozen ways to abuse the subspace storage link.

  For starters, it would let me massively expand my carrying capacity. With the right runes, I could inscribe a linked glyph array directly onto my toolbelt—granting me instant access to gear that wouldn’t normally fit anywhere short of a shipping crate. A dedicated slot for the Bowling Ball of Rolling Momentum, for example. A specialty pocket for elixirs, salves, and other life-saving contraband. Hell, with enough time and tinkering, I might even be able to replicate Jakob’s infamous sofa launcher, since I was pretty sure it operated on the same fundamental principles.

  I was rearing to get to work, but sadly it would have to wait.

  I added both the Saw Gun and the Dark Solstice Cleaver to my spatial storage, then left the soul forge behind and made my way to my room. It wouldn’t be long before we needed to return to Kringlegard, and I still needed to take care of all the stats I’d earned from leveling up. My gut told me the residents of the 49th floor would be overjoyed to see their missing friends and family members, but Nikoli did have his fair share of supporters who probably wouldn’t be too jazzed to learn their leader was dead.

  I didn’t expect a fight, but I wanted to ready for anything just in case.